New Champions LeagueThe 2024-2025 season will have an early league stage with 8 games, and increasing the number of participating teams from 32 to 36 will not use the club coefficient to assign two of the four extra places in the tournament.

Both measures were approved by the board UEFA At this Tuesday’s meeting in Vienna, after a thorough consultation with interested parties, and its decision to introduce the so-called “Swiss”, the final format and the list of approaches to European club matches from the 2024/25 season were approved. System “for the new Champions League on April 19, 2021.

The key changes, approved on Tuesday, could be reduced to 10 to 8 games at the Champions League stage, eliminating access based on the coefficient of clubs and changing the criteria for allocating two of the four extra places. And fans have demanded.

While acknowledging the need to protect domestic leagues, it also confirms UEFA’s strong commitment to open competition and sporting qualification policy.

UEFA explained that eight group stage matches will be played in the scheduled ten European weeks and in both the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League. Enjoy a week exclusively on the calendar.

The four additional spaces created by increasing the number of teams from 32 to 36 will be allocated as follows:
– The club will be placed third in the Association Championship, which ranks fifth in the UEFA National Association Rankings.
– A place will be awarded to a national champion, increasing the number of qualifying clubs from four to five by so-called “Champions Route”.
– The last two places will go to the federations with the best collective performance of their clubs in the previous season (the total number of points scored will be divided by the number of participants).

Both clubs will be the highest-ranked club in the domestic league behind the Champions League. For example, at the end of the current season both clubs will add a club to the Champions League based on the combined performance of their clubs, England and the Netherlands.

Recognizing the importance of the national tournament calendar throughout Europe, the UEFA Executive Committee reaffirmed that all pre-match matches will continue to be played on weekdays. He noted that by increasing the total number of teams to 36, the biggest change would be the transformation of the traditional team into a single league stage that would include all participating teams.

Each club will be guaranteed at least 8 league stage games against 8 different opponents (four at home and four outside) instead of the previous six games against three teams, both indoors and out.

The teams that finish in the top eight in the league will automatically qualify for the knockout stage, while those in the ninth-24th position will play a two-leg tie to advance to the 16th round of the tournament. Similar design changes apply to the Europa League (8 games in the league stage) and the Conference League (6 games in the league stage). Both will add 36 teams to the league stage.

EFE